4 Carnival party
At 9:30pm21:30 we drove towards the carnival party at Lake City,
all dressed-up, but most of the passengers only with a few simple attributes. I
expected I had to play a more observant role than to be a participant of the
party; if that was the case the night would be long but still an interesting
experience. It was groundless fear because it was a great party with a lot of
young people of my age. Because they
didn’t recognize this silly guy in that funny costume, a lot of them came to me
for a chat. The party was one with a lot of beer, food, dancing and country music
and last but not least a mechanical bull on which every man had to prove that
he was a “real man”. I enjoyed the
party intensely and I was invited to join a group of young people who seemed to
know each other very well. One by one the male part of the group tried to
conquer this mechanical bull while the ladies encouraged them passionately, yes
the standard ritual between two sexes. They started to tease and challenge me to
tame this bull and one lady increased the pressure by asking to do it especially
for her. For myself I already decided that I wouldn’t mount and fight this Bull,
not even for ten beautiful girls so I explained to them that I was loyal to my
iron horse and that I wanted to ride her tomorrow without a broken arm. With the amount
of alcohol I already had the risk would be great. But tell that to a lady who already
had some drinks and who was excited by the idea that some mysterious stranger would
win the bull-contest especially for her. Yes, she was very disappointed; her romantic
illusion of the prince on the white horse fell to pieces. The expression on her
face told me I was skipped from her shortlist of interesting men, but I was
sure there were more on her list so I did not feel sorry for her. Shortly after this bull fighting event the
group split up in small groups. I continued my conversation with a girl named Linda
and a couple who were close friends with Linda. At a certain
moment the couple went to the dance floor and Linda asked me to be her dancing
partner for the night. I told her that when she meant ballroom dancing, dancing
with me was almost as risky as dancing with our friend the mechanical bull. She
laughed and told me not to worry because she was a good teacher and it was line-dancing,
so the risk for her would be limited. There was an huge
dance floor with a separate section reserved to practice the steps of
line-dancing. Linda told me that line-dancing is a repeated sequence of steps in which
a group of people dance in one or more lines or rows all facing the same
direction and executing the steps at the same time. She also told me that for the next two hours the dance
floor was reserved for the line-dancers and every half hour a replay of 20 minutes
would start. In the 10 minutes left, people could leave or join the group.
After those two hours the dance floor would be for all types of dancing. She spent
30 minutes trying to teach me the steps and I enjoyed every minute of it. This was probably the best way to find out
more about the character of a person, at least when you act as clumsy as me.
Most people would start to show some irritation and impatience, but Linda was not
only very attractive but she definitely must have a very kind, patient and
gentle character. At the end of
the first line of dance cycles she realized it was hopeless and that we could
not join the second or any replay. When we left the dance floor we saw that her friends took
their second half-hour. Linda didn’t show any disappointment and she told me
that we could catch-up the lost time later during the free-style. The rest of the
night I will never forget. We danced most of the time, I am certainly not a
John Travolta but the alcohol removed the last shyness in me. Around 5:00am5:00 Linda and her friends
told me they had to go because they had to work that evening. Linda offered to
bring me to the campground and that was an offer I could not refuse. After we’d notified
the Arrowhead-family
and we’d said goodbye to Linda’s friends we drove in the direction of the
camping. Half way Linda told me she will make a
short 4mi6.5km detour
to show me her apartment. |